Cleveland Guardians rookie Steven Kwan stays focused on mental aspects of baseball

Steven Kwan has had an electric start to his MLB career, but his mental approach is what could sustain him throughout the long season.

What a week by Steven Kwan!

As we’ve pointed out here, Kwan has had one of the greatest four-game stretches in MLB history. And when a hitter has this type of stretch, they look incredibly confident and appear to be in a flow-like state.

Watching Kwan play the first few games, one might believe that he was always an incredibly confident athlete.

However, according to Kwan himself, that was not the case.

Kwan mentioned that as a freshman at Oregon State University, he had difficulty making the transition to college baseball. Due to these early struggles, he began learning about the mental game of baseball from consultant Greg Warburton and director of player development Tyler Graham.

Kwan recalled that he was provided with an introduction to mental skills training and learned about the importance of taking a deep breath as part of his pre-bat routine (which is certainly evident in watching him approach his at-bats so far this season). In his interview with Josh Worden, Kwan noted that taking a deep breath really helped him slow things down.

In addition to learning about the mental game of baseball from Warburton and Graham, Kwan also consulted with Alan Jaeger. Kwan recounted that Jaeger taught him about the importance of meditation and how to implement this technique into his mental preparation for performance.

As he learned about the importance of mental skills such as positive affirmations, visualization, and relaxation, he began to utilize these techniques in his training. In fact, Kwan would practice meditation before games to make sure he was positive and energized.

As Kwan began to focus on both the mental and physical aspects of baseball, his performance improved greatly. He had great success at Oregon State, where he had a .319 career batting average and helped the Beavers win the 2018 College World Series.

After being drafted by Cleveland in the fifth round of the 2018 MLB draft, Kwan spent three years in the minor leagues, hitting .301 with a .380 on base percentage. Then, during spring training this year, Kwan put up remarkable statistics. In 32 at-bats, he collected 15 hits for a .469 batting average and a .500 on-base percentage.

And after Sunday’s game, in which Kwan went 5-for-5, he was interviewed about his performance thus far.

From Kwan’s response, it is evident that he continues to implement lessons learned about the mental game into his day-to-day MLB routine. In particular, he mentioned that he stays process-focused rather than dwelling on the outcome and thus tries to take things one day at a time regardless of the results.